


for queen and country

by stiction



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Drug Use, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-01
Updated: 2015-07-01
Packaged: 2018-04-07 05:37:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4251423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stiction/pseuds/stiction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She was like the threatening dawn in his childhood hive, primal and looming larger the closer he stepped towards her. His head was still bent, neck bared. </p><p>He knew the final trial. He knew the clinical definition--dedication to the Empire, subservience to the Empress--and he knew the dime-store novelization--dedication to the Empire, forbidden lust for the Empress--and god, he had forgiven himself his own sins during his years in the academy, bent low beneath her plate-print portrait on his mandatory Iconagraphic Image.</p>
            </blockquote>





	for queen and country

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rflame135](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rflame135/gifts).



They cleaned him up straight out of the gates, two slight rustblooded women catching him when he stumbled, easing him down onto a chair. There was a cloth at his face and cool water running down his cheeks, stinging where it hit the split in his lip.

He bit back the groan.

They were talking about him, he realized once the haze cleared. Blood stopped rushing in his ears, and his clenched fists unwound to shaking hands hanging down between his knees.

His clothes were stripped until his chest was bare. Cool water at his shoulder, a dry pressure, then the tacky edge of a bandage. Karkat shut his eyes against the sting of scraped flesh and the tactile memory of his sickle catching in flesh.

A hand in his mouth, skirting the wound in his lip while it checked for missing teeth, internal bleeding. The troll’s fingers were still slick with spit when they gripped his jaw, pulled his face up to the light. The backs of his eyelids flared bright before he adjusted to something that wasn’t darkness or the flicker of flame.

“Pity,” the troll sighed, and he cracked his eyes open to see her mouth purse. “Can’t do much about that lip, now.”

She pressed her thumb to his lower lip and the shudder ran quick down his spine. He didn’t flinch two nights ago when an opponent caught his mouth with a dagger, but now, in the relative safety of the infirmary, the pain flared brighter. He focused on it, bore down until the face before him came into sharper focus. Thin lips, a snubbed nose, one eyebrow sliced in two by a faint scar. She had patched him up before, in the second round of trials.

“You know what comes next?” the healer asked, her eyes softer now. At his mouth her thumb left the scabbing cut, pressed instead in the neutral zone between lips and chin.

He nodded. He had read the manuals and the sordid tales of threshecutioner ascension alike. The healer’s mouth quirked, a sympathetic smile, before she let go of his face.

“Is it time?” she asked, looking over his head.

“Not yet,” the other troll said. “A little while still.”

There was a spare knife taped to his thigh, underneath his pants, and Karkat could feel the cold metal on his skin. The subtle space where the tape lifted was sticky when he stood and his muscles flexed. He shoved his hands under the belt at his waist, tore it loose, and set the blade down on the table next to the healers' tools. 

“If you like, there’s a cot in the corner,” the second healer told him, beckoning him closer so she could smear salve on his lip. “You’d better rest first.”

He saved his gratitude and inclined his head instead. The cot was a deluxe recuperacoon compared to his fitful naps on rocks and grass these past few days. He had taken shelter under what he could find, but the exposed slices of skin had burnt, and now they ached to brush fabric and cold metal. When his eyes shut, all he could see were empty eyes and the grasping hands of the other candidates on the sleeves of his jacket, sliding off his face without purchase in their final throes.

“Don’t die,” Terezi had said on the night before the trials began. Her caste shirt had been exchanged for a neophyte legislacerator’s collar and spats, and she stood a hand’s width above him on the steps of her new living quarters. “Someone has to bear witness while I dole out merciless justice.”

“I won’t,” he had promised, and her lips had moved into something that looked like a smile. He had known then that her trials would be as rigorous as his, even if the outcome was not as hands-on. The sickle at his side had been sharpened again and again over the sweeps, until it now shone, no blood able to cling long enough to stain. “I won’t.”

He woke to the thought of her laughing, to the healer shaking his shoulder.

“It’s time,” she said. It sounded like an apology. She helped him into a new, sharply creased uniform and then held her hand out towards the door. The healer waited until he stepped through the arch, until his pupils expanded, to shut him out of the light.

Alternia’s underbelly had always been labyrinthine, ever since the lowblood contingent had gained access to excavatory technology. There were as many passages connecting the Victorious Coliseum to the spartan dormitories of the threshecutioners as there were blood vessels in a body, as there were planets across the universe that had come under Imperial rule.

In this hallway, however, there was no noise to distract him from the journey. There were no crowds of trolls discreetly selling their wares, no stalls of spice and foreign flora, strange furs, no intergalactic travelers making their living by a night’s rest on a stranger’s concupiscent couch. Here, the biolumiscent larvae tubes lining the ceiling were fuchsia, and Karkat was alone with the ache in his bones.

But he won, he reminded himself, pausing in his stride to slide a hand under his collar and touch the bandage on his shoulder. He survived ten rounds of trial by combat. His hands, unwashed for several days during each session, had been covered by a thick and cracking coat of blood. Even though his sickle was gone now, left behind in the healer’s chamber to be washed and delivered back to his dormitory upon his successful completion of the traditional ascension rites, he knew that it would shine the next time he laid eyes upon it. His skin had washed clean. The metal, too, would resist corruption.

At last the fluorescent doors loomed in front of him. They were twice his height, and he spared a moment to consider his hand on the space next to the heavy handle. He spared a moment to breathe before he moved his hand to the cool metal and turned, surprised to feel it give so easily. He spared a moment to steel his nerves.

The door opened unto a vast chamber, so long in depth that he could scarcely make out anything aside from the sconces at the far wall and the lights lining the floor from the pink carpet at his feet to the throne.

There was Karkat, and there was the walk to his destiny.

He started down the carpet, allowing himself a flash of reverence for the thick pile of the floor beneath his feet. Anything softer than rock and bone and flesh.

The light, approaching the throne, was slanted just so, framing her from the back in flickering licks of fire so that from here all he could see was the silhouette of the chair itself, shining whorls of gold inset with jewels that were worth more than his life.

When he was close enough to make out the vaguest gradations of shadow that accommodated her outline, he knelt. The breath caught in his thorax, in his stupid lungs and throat.

He thought again of everyone he had killed to get here, and waited with his chin touching his knee. The nape of his neck was exposed, every survival instinct he had screaming to cover it, to rip the dagger he had since forgotten from his thigh. He itched to defend; he itched to bend further in a deferential bow.  

“C’mere, sweet cheeks,” Her Imperious Condescension crooned.

When he stole a glance through his lashes, he could see the outstretched glimmer of her bangled arm; he moved slow out of his deep deferential kneel. He was loathe to look right at her, afraid to see what a troll looked like after hundreds (thousands, the brave whispered in mutinous lairs) of sweeps.

She was like the threatening dawn in his childhood hive, primal and looming larger the closer he stepped towards her. His head was still bent, neck bared.

At least, Karkat thought, his chances of going blind were about equal to watching the sun rise.

He stopped breathing when he was within arm’s reach. Her clawed fingertip stroked the soft, unguarded floor of his jaw.

The pound of his bloodpusher thrummed through his neck, so close to that razor nail as he lifted his gaze to her guidance. Without thinking, he knelt again, his eyes level to her knees before he lowered them. Her shoes shone in the firelight, though her skin drank it in without reflection.

“So small,” she breathed. “You got a lot of anger in that lil’ body.”

“Your highness--” Karkat gasped, before the words could stick in his throat.

“You’re so very, very close,” the Empress continued, fingernails dragging across his cheeks. He shivered to his core, even when she continued: “I know how hard you busted your ass for this. All the way from bumfuck nowhere to Fuckingham Palace here.”

With blood in his ears she sounded like a prophetizer, her voice a gravel that crested high. He could feel her fingers sliding back towards his neck, the hair that had been shaved close upon his acceptance into the academy a sweep ago.

He knew the final trial. He knew the clinical definition--dedication to the Empire, subservience to the Empress--and he knew the dime-store novelization--dedication to the Empire, forbidden lust for the Empress--and god, he had forgiven himself his own sins during his years in the academy, bent low beneath her plate-print portait on his mandatory Iconagraphic Image.

She pulled him in closer towards her, close so that when he blinked, his pupils shuttered thin for a moment before expanding to delineate grays and blacks, her skin from her flowing hair and the black spread of her lips.

Legend spoke of her height--he had stood on the fringes of circles in schoolfeeding, listened in on the gossip of his peers--but he felt weak compared to her size, to the incessant growth of the practically immortal. Her hands weren’t gnarled like lowblood schoolfeeders’, but smooth like a new hatchling’s. She had been through molts, her claws spoke of molts incessant and imposing like impolite suitors, but her skin, her exoskeleton, was tight as his own.

“You want power,” she whispered, and though it wasn’t a question, he replied: “Yes.”

It was barely a breath, but he knew that she heard.

The Condesce laughed, high and sharp so that it tingled in his bones, and pushed his face against the inside of her thigh.

“Then get going, guppy,” she said. Her fingertips drew a circle on his neck, calming despite his frayed nerves.

When he chanced a breath, he could smell her, sudden and insistent on his palate, the sparking incitation of mating hormones outside of season. Karkat had heard a whisper in his youth about the Empress, about her instinctual need for heirs to challenge, heirs to slaughter in their youth, heirs to prove her superiority. His skin had tingled, pan sparking just thinking about it. Thinking about his slight stature against her insurmountable strength.

His cartilage nub touched her skin and god, the shaky breath he took reeked of dominant hormones.

Karkat licked his lips. He chanced a glance upwards, chanced the sight of her arched brow over her glasses. When he leaned in further it was as much fear as attraction.

She was unsheathed--he could feel that she was unsheathed by the lack of pressure in her nook. His lips touched the delicate skin between her legs, flushed fuchsia in the candlelight, and she sighed. Her claws laid against his neck, pinpricks of pain that kept him centered, and when he pushed the flat of his tongue against her nook she pulled him closer.

“That’s it, lil’ one,” the Empress said, sliding that hand down to press between his shoulderblades.

And Karkat knew about this. He had read it, he had read it with his hand shoved down his academy-issued leggings while his year-one blockmate went out to lowblood bars to drink himself sick with sugar. His year-one blockmate had had his throat torn out by a candidate with razor gloves in the first round of trials.

He let his tongue slip past his teeth and lips to taste her again. She was sweet, a highblood’s taste that clung to his palate when he closed his mouth, prepared himself. He held his hands behind his back.

She whispered encouragement when Karkat slid his tongue inside her, brought her other hand to his hair and pulled hard. Her pulse jumped; he could feel it where his cheek was pressed to her thigh and suddenly, his shoulders shivering, he was aware of a matching throb in his nook.

“Ease up, g,” the Condesce laughed. Pulled by his hair, he leaned back. She had moved forward to the edge of her throne, her legs spread to either side of his, and at last her face was illuminated by the light. There was a smile on her lips, an alarming amount of teeth visible. “You a cute motherfucker, huh?”

He opened his mouth to thank her but she shushed him.

“Hush, kiddo. Don’t wanna hear you glubbin’ unless you hollerin’ my name.” Her hands moved to the lapels of his academy coat, tugging sharp at the buttons until they slipped free. “Get that shit off, we about to get hella informal.”

Karkat shrugged out of the coat. It fell to the steps behind him, leaving his chest bare. He looked up through his lashes, and the Empress had rested her chin on her hand, raking her gaze over his bandages and the cloudy bruises on his ribs.

“Poor thing,” she cooed, and like the healer she brought her hand to his lower lip, pressed at the scabbed skin. “Let’s get you feelin’ good.”

She patted her thigh, and Karkat paused, taking a moment to feel the rush of blood to his nook and the thrum of it through his bulge as it began to unsheathe. She reeked of pheremones, and he could only resist for a moment before he stood, letting his uniform pants slip to the floor, and placed one knee on the throne, careful not to slip and bruise her. Her bulge tickled the inside of his leg. Karkat bit back a hysterical laugh, bracing himself on the arms of the throne as he brought his other leg up to straddle her.

This close, he felt dwarfed, again the runt as he had been as a hatchling. He was older now, stronger, but he knew that the hands on his hips now could snap his spine in two if they wanted to.

“Scared?” she whispered, her breath ghosting across his forehead. “Open wide.”

He parted his lips for her fingers, the claws scraping lightly against his tongue. Her hand was coated in something thin and so sugary it made his teeth ache. He swallowed around the spike of panic, reminded himself that she did this for his own good. His throat tingled, the honey a warm pulse that radiated out through his limbs while he waited for it to reach his skin. 

“There we go.” Her hands were big enough to wrap around his thighs, and she pulled him closer so that his hips touched her stomach. The contact nearly burned, the thrum from the honey settling at the base of his spine and urging him forward towards her. His bulge twisted, and he brought a hurried hand to press it to his abdomen. With the honey, he thought (and perhaps even without it he would have thought) she would cull him herself if he dared to touch her like that.

Her bulge--Karkat shuddered and pressed closer--slid against the lips of his nook, the tip catching as the Empress nudged his hips down. She let a thin breath out between her teeth as it twisted further inside him, growing thicker until he could register nothing but the buzz in his pan and the stretch of her between his legs.

“Good boy,” she said, her voice cutting through the daze. “Now hop to it.”

She slapped his flank and the skin under her palm grew hot, a burning reminder that set him in motion. He shut his eyes, tipping his head back to bare his throat, and rolled his hips. Her bulge was an insistent pressure in his nook, the fit so tight that she barely moved even when he tried to lift up on shaking thighs.

“You need s’more?”

Karkat nodded fiercely, another shoot of pain arcing through his exhausted muscles. Her fingers pressed at his mouth again, coated his lips until he let his jaw fall open. This time she lingered, the pads of her fingertips pressing against his tongue, stroking the inside of his cheeks to mirror the slow roll of her bulge inside his nook.

She gave him another dose of honey, rubbed it into his gums and against his split lip so that his face tingled and his mouth went numb. He could feel his nook relax as the sensation spread.

“Faster,” she said now, her hands moving again to his hips so she could set the pace.

He followed, his thighs shaking with the effort even as the rest of him became white noise, a fuzzy background sensation of being.

“Good guppy,” the Empress was saying again, running her mouth as her bulge writhed faster, “So glubbin’ tight, what a good pet--”

Karkat felt it when she threaded one hand through his hair and dragged his head back again, pulled him in close so that his back bowed taut.

He knew, he had been told, but his head swam as she set her razor teeth to the spot where his neck met his collarbone and bit down hard. It was a dull pressure now, secondary to the warmth in his nook as she came, genetic material a hot pulse with each throb of her bulge.

She sighed when she took her teeth out. Her breath felt like fire suddenly, sparking pain in the bite. He had seen it on the academy schoolfeeders, the ropy elliptical scar that marked them as proper members of Her Imperious Condescension’s fleet.

His vision was blurry, limbs still tingling from the honey and exertion and the sleepless nights of the trials, when he found himself staggering out of the throne room.

Nobody caught him when he stumbled.

He leaned against the wall around the corner, sliding down until his head was between his knees and he could breathe. His clothes were on again. They were damp, sticking to his skin at the shoulder and groin, and the thin sheen of sweat on his body was starting to itch.

When he could walk again, he made it back to his respiteblock. They would give him a new assignment tomorrow at sunset, but for now, it was still his, empty and beckoning with its silence.

He stripped again, his head clearing, and in the ablution trap he gave in to the throbbing in his unsheathed bulge, spilling red on the trap floor before the water could wash it away along with the steady drip of fuschia between his feet. Getting clean used up most of his allotted hot water, but by the time he wiped the mirror clean of steam he felt mostly like himself again.

A little older. A little tougher. He stretched his head to the side, wiping the mirror again so he could see the mark she had left more clearly.

It was neat, the edges clean slices and deep red at the center. He had avoided it in the shower, knowing it would sting worse than the scrapes of battle, and so it was ringed with smudges of lipstick. At the center, she had pressed her lips to his skin. The sight left Karkat suddenly breathless, leaning on the sink for support. Blood pulsed in his temples from the sugar still in his system.

He staggered towards his recuperacoon, one hand pressed to the imprint of the Empress’ teeth.

He would troll Terezi when he woke up, when the memory of sharp teeth and strong hands was less insistent.


End file.
